Norm's Notes

An archive of articles and listserve postings of interest, mostly posted without commentary, linked to commentary at the Education Notes Online blog. Note that I do not endorse the points of views of all articles, but post them for reference purposes.

Sunday, January 04, 2015

School Reform Fails the Test

How can our schools get better when we’ve made our teachers the problem and not the solution?

By Mike Rose

December 10, 2014

During
the first wave of what would become the 30-year school reform movement
that shapes education policy to this day, I visited good public school
classrooms across the United States, wanting to compare the rhetoric of
reform, which tended to be abstract and focused on crisis, with the
daily efforts of teachers and students who were making public education
work.
I identified teachers, principals, and
superintendents who knew about local schools; college professors who
taught teachers; parents and community activists who were involved in
education. What’s going on in your area that seems promising? I asked.
What are teachers talking about? Who do parents hold in esteem? In all, I
interviewed and often observed in action more than 60 teachers and 25
administrators in 30-some schools. I also met many students and parents
from the communities I visited. What soon became evident—and is still
true today—was an intellectual and social richness that was rarely
discussed in the public sphere or in the media. I tried to capture this
travelogue of educational achievement in a book published in 1995 called
Possible Lives: The Promise of Education in America. Twenty
years later, I want to consider school reform in light of the lessons
learned during that journey, and relearned in later conversations with
some of these same teachers.

For
all of the features that schools share, life inside a classroom is
profoundly affected by the immediate life outside it, by the particular
communities in which a school is embedded. Visiting a one-room
schoolhouse in rural Montana or a crowded high school in Chicago, you
will find much in the routines and the curriculum that holds steady—the
grammar of schooling, as historians David Tyack and Larry Cuban called
it in Tinkering Toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform
(1995). Yet within that grammar lie differences: in topics of
discussion, in the illustrations that teachers use, in how the language
sounds, and in the worries of the day pressing in from the neighborhood.
These differences, the differences of place, make each school distinct
from every other.
During my travels, I watched as
third-graders in Calexico, a California-Mexico border town, gave reports
on current events in Spanish and in English. They followed the
journalist’s central questions—who, what, why, when, where, and
how—exploring the significance of the depleted ozone layer, of smog in
nearby industrial Mexicali, of changes in the local school board.
In Chicago, 12th-graders discussed Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying,
trying to make sense of the characters’ different perspectives,
offering provisional explanations of important occurrences in the novel.
They were gaining a sense of the power of speculation, of moving an
inquiry forward by wading into uncertain waters.
On
Baltimore’s West Side, first-graders combined literature and science by
reading a fanciful story about hermit crabs and then conducting an
experiment—resulting from a student’s question—to understand the
environment in which the crabs thrive.
In small
towns in the Mississippi Delta, middle school children played games with
physical representations of algebraic operations, part of civil rights
activist Bob Moses’s Algebra Project, a curriculum as well as a social
movement that still helps prepare children, regardless of academic
background, for algebra, which Moses believes is an important pathway to
opportunity.
And in a one-room schoolhouse in
Polaris, Montana, students kept a naturalist’s journal on the willows in
the creek behind the school. At one point the teacher bent over an
older student who was working on sketches and measurements. The teacher
pointed to one detailed drawing and asked his student why he thought the
willows grew in such dense clusters, rather than long and snaky up a
tree. The boy had fished these creeks for years, the teacher later
explained, and “I just wanted him to take a different look at what he
already knows.”
The teachers in these varied
classrooms shared a belief in their students’ ability to become engaged
by ideas and to develop as thoughtful, intellectually adventurous
people. They saw the subjects they taught—whether science, literature,
or math—as bountiful resources that would foster their students’
development.
To update Possible Lives, I
spoke to each of these teachers again about 10 years after my visit and
found that all of them shared a deep concern about the potential effect
of the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 on the classrooms they
had worked so hard to create. No Child Left Behind and the Obama
administration’s 2009 Race to the Top initiative are built on the
assumption that our public schools are in crisis, and that the best way
to improve them is by using standardized tests (up to now only in
reading and math) to rate student achievement and teacher effectiveness.
Learning is defined as a rise in a standardized test score and teaching
as the set of activities that lead to that score, with the curriculum
tightly linked to the tests. This system demonstrates a technocratic
neatness, but it doesn’t measure what goes on in the classrooms I
visited. A teacher can prep students for a standardized test, get a bump
in scores, and yet not be providing a very good education.
Organizing
schools and creating curricula based on an assumption of wholesale
failure make going to school a regimented and punitive experience. If we
determine success primarily by a test score, we miss those considerable
intellectual achievements that aren’t easily quantifiable. If we think
about education largely in relation to economic competitiveness, then we
ignore the social, moral, and aesthetic dimensions of teaching and
learning. You will be hard pressed to find in federal education policy
discussions of achievement that include curiosity, reflection,
creativity, aesthetics, pleasure, or a willingness to take a chance, to
blunder. Our understanding of teaching and learning, and of the
intellectual and social development of children, becomes terribly narrow
in the process.

School
reform is hardly a new phenomenon, and the harshest criticism of
schools tends to coincide with periods of social change or economic
transformation. The early decades of the 20th century—a time of rapid
industrialization and mass immigration from central and southern
Europe—saw a blistering attack, reminiscent of our own time. The Soviet
launch of Sputnik in 1957 triggered another assault, with particular
concern over math and science education. And during the 1980s, as
postwar American global economic preeminence was being challenged, we
saw a flurry of reports on the sorry state of education, the most
notable of which, A Nation at Risk (1983), warned of “a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people.”
Public
education, a vast, ambitious, loosely coupled system of schools, is one
of our country’s defining institutions. It is also flawed, in some
respects deeply so. Unequal funding, fractious school politics,
bureaucratic inertia, uneven curricula, uninspired pedagogy, and the
social ills that seep into the classroom all limit the potential of our
schools. The critics are right to be worried. The problem is that the
criticism, fueled as it is by broader cultural anxieties, is often
sweeping and indiscriminate. Critics blame the schools for problems that
have many causes. And some remedies themselves create difficulties.
Policymakers and educators face a challenge: how to target the problems
without diminishing the achievements in our schools or undermining their
purpose. The current school reform movement fails this challenge.
Back when I was visiting schools for Possible Lives,
critics were presenting charts of declining scores on SATs but
overlooking the demographic and economic factors that contributed to
these numbers—for example, more low-income and immigrant students were
taking the tests (arguably an egalitarian development). Comparing our
test scores with those of other countries, the critics also failed to
consider the social, economic, and cultural differences. (Students in
our nation’s affluent districts fare much better in international
comparisons.) The proposed remedies included not only new curricula and
tests to measure the mastery of these courses of study, but also more
time in school, more rigorous teacher education and credentialing, and
market-based options like school choice and vouchers. And the primary
goal of reform was always presented as an economic one: to prepare our
young people for the world of work and to protect our nation’s position
in the global economy.
Since then, the reform effort
has spread and grown more intense, and it continues to focus on public
school failure. No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top have
dramatically increased the influence of the federal government on public
schools. Both programs require states to establish standardized testing
programs, and federal funding often depends on the test results. If
schools don’t meet certain performance criteria, they are subject to
sanction and even closure. Race to the Top added a competitive grant
program to the federal effort, requiring states to lift limits on
charter schools and tie teacher evaluations to students’ test scores in
order to be eligible for a significant one-time award of federal funds.
Some philanthropies have also supported the reform agenda, and private
advocacy groups have championed causes ranging from charter schools to
alternative approaches to teacher credentialing to, most recently,
overturning teacher tenure and union protections.
Not
all those who identify themselves as reformers would subscribe to the
redefinition of teaching and learning that concerns me, and some of
those reformers are raising among their peers the same issues I am. But a
dominant account does emerge from many influential reform reports and
organizations, and it is supported by the U.S. Department of Education.

A
core assumption underlying No Child Left Behind is that substandard
academic achievement is the result of educators’ low expectations and
lack of effort. The standardized tests mandated by the act, its framers
contended, hold administrators and teachers accountable—there can be no
excuses for a student’s poor performance. It’s true that some teachers
don’t expect much of the young people in their charge, particularly
students from low-income backgrounds and underrepresented racial and
ethnic groups. But because we know that so many factors contribute to
student achievement, the strongest of which is parental income, the low
expectations of some teachers cannot possibly account for all the
disparities in academic performance. The act’s assumptions also reveal a
pretty simplified notion of what motivates a teacher: raise your
expectations or you’ll be punished—what a friend of mine calls the
caveman theory of motivation. An even more simplistic theory of
cognitive and behavioral change suggests that threats will lead to a
change in beliefs about students, whether these beliefs come from
prejudice or from pity. Still, No Child Left Behind’s focus on
vulnerable students was important, and the law did jolt some
low-performing schools into improving their students’ mastery of the
basic math and reading skills measured by the tests.
But
the use of such tests and the high stakes attached to them also led to
other results that any student of organizational behavior could have
predicted. A number of education officials manipulated the system by
lowering the cutoff test scores for proficiency, or withheld from
testing students who would perform poorly, or occasionally fudged the
results. A dramatic example is the recent case of cheating in Atlanta,
where school personnel all the way up to the superintendent were
indicted.
Studies of what went on in classrooms are
equally troubling and predictable. The high-stakes tests led many
administrators and teachers to increase math and reading test
preparation and reduce time spent on science, history, and geography.
The arts were, in some cases, drastically reduced or eliminated. Aspects
of math and reading that didn’t directly relate to the tests were also
eliminated, even though they could have led to broader understanding and
appreciation of these subjects.
Not long ago, a
teacher I’ll call Priscilla contacted me with a typical story. She has
been teaching for 30 years in an elementary school in a low-income
community north of Los Angeles. The school’s test scores were not
adequate last year, so the principal, under immense pressure from the
school district, mandated for all teachers a regimented curriculum
focused on basic math and literacy skills. The principal directed the
teachers not to change or augment this curriculum. So now Priscilla
cannot draw on her cabinets full of materials collected over the years
to enliven or individualize instruction. The time spent on the new
curriculum has meant trims in science and social studies. Art and music
have been cut entirely. “There is no joy here,” she told me, “only
admonishment.”
It makes sense to concentrate on the
basics of math and reading, for they are central to success in school,
and an unacceptable number of students don’t master them. And a score on
a standardized test seems like a straightforward measure of mastery.
But in addition to the kinds of manipulation I discussed, there are a
host of procedural and technical problems in developing, scoring, and
interpreting such tests. Test outcomes depend on the statistical models
used, and scores can fluctuate and be marred by error—thus there is a
debate among testing experts about what, finally, can be deduced from
the scores about a student’s or a school’s achievement. Similar debates
surround the currently popular use of “value-added” methods to determine
a teacher’s effectiveness.
A further issue is that a
test that includes, say, the writing of an essay, a music recital, or
the performance of an experiment embodies different notions of learning
and achievement than do the typical tasks on standardized tests:
multiple choice items, matching, fill-ins. I have given both kinds of
tests. Both have value, but they represent knowledge in different ways
and require different kinds of teaching.
The nature
of a school’s response to high-stakes pressure is especially pertinent
for those less affluent students at the center of reform. When teachers
in schools like Priscilla’s concentrate on standardized tests, students
might improve their scores but receive an inadequate education. A
troubling pattern in American schooling thereby continues: poor kids get
a lower-tier education focused on skills and routine while students in
more affluent districts get a robust and engaging school experience.
It’s
important to consider how far removed standardized tests are from the
cognitive give and take of the classroom. That’s one reason for the
debate about whether a test score—which is, finally, a statistical
abstraction—accurately measures learning. Some reform leaders, including
Arne Duncan, the U.S. secretary of education, are now trying to dial
down the emphasis on testing. But because tests are easy to use and have
an aura of objectivity, they are likely to remain central in the reform
agenda.

Priscilla’s
story is emblematic not only of the mechanical and restrictive pedagogy
that is frequently forced on teachers in a test-driven environment, but
also of the attitude toward teachers. They live in a bipolar world,
praised as central to students’ achievement and yet routinely condemned
as the cause of low performance.
When the
standardized test score is the measure of a teacher’s effectiveness,
other indicators of competence are discounted. One factor is
seniority—which reformers believe, not without reason, overly constrains
an administrator’s hiring decisions. Another is post-baccalaureate
degrees and certifications in education, a field many reformers hold in
contempt. Several studies do report low correlation between experience
(defined as years in the profession) and students’ test scores. Other
studies find a similarly low correlation between students’ scores and
teachers’ post-baccalaureate degrees and certifications. These studies
lead to an absolute claim that neither experience nor schooling beyond
the bachelor’s degree makes any difference.
What a
remarkable assertion. Can you think of any other kind of work—from hair
styling to neurosurgery—where we don’t value experience and training? If
reformers had a better understanding of teaching, they might wonder
whether something was amiss with the studies, which tend to deal in
simple averages and define experience or training in crude ways.
Experience, for example, is typically defined as years on the job, yet
years in service, considered alone, don’t mean that much. A dictionary
definition of experience—“activity that includes training, observation
of practice, and personal participation and knowledge gained from
this”—indicates the connection to competence. The teachers in Possible Lives
had attended workshops and conferences, participated in professional
networks, or taken classes. They experimented with their curricula and
searched out ideas and materials to incorporate into their work. What
people do with their time on the job becomes the foundation of expertise.
More
generally, the qualities of good work—study and experimentation, the
accumulation of knowledge, and refinement of skill—are thinly
represented in descriptions of teacher quality, overshadowed by the
simplified language of testing. In a similar vein, the long history of
Western thought on education—from Plato to Septima Clark—is rarely if
ever mentioned in the reform literature. History as well as experience
and inquiry are replaced with a metric.
These
attitudes toward experience are rooted in the technocratic-managerial
ideology that drives many kinds of policy, from health care to urban
planning to agriculture: the devaluing of local, craft, and experiential
knowledge and the elevating of systems thinking, of finding the large
economic, social, or organizational levers to pull in order to initiate
change. A professor of management tells a University of California class
of aspiring principals that the more they know about the particulars of
instruction, the less effective they’ll be, for that nitty-gritty
knowledge will blur their perception of the problem and the application
of universal principles of management—as fitting for a hospital or a
manufacturing plant as a school.
This dismissal of
classroom knowledge fits with the trendy discourse of innovation and
creative disruption, a discourse that runs throughout education reform,
asserting that it will take entrepreneurial outsiders to change the
system. I understand the impulse here, because getting something fresh
through large school bureaucracies can be maddening. But creative
disruption is predicated on the belief that anything new must be better,
and it relies on a reductive model of organizational and technological
change. One of the celebrated technologies in the disrupters’ armory is
the computer, which clearly allows wonderful things to happen in
education. But online charter schools have a troubled record, and higher
education’s much ballyhooed massive open online courses, or MOOCs,
are proving to be much more limited in their usefulness or success than
predicted. The computer’s potential is realized only when people who
are wise about teaching and learning program it, and when it is
integrated into a strong curriculum taught by someone who is savvy about
its use.

If
you pare down your concept of teaching far enough, you are left with
sequences of behaviors and routines—with techniques. Technique becomes
central to the reformers’ redefinition of teaching, and the focus on
technique is at the heart of many of the alternative teacher
credentialing programs that have emerged over the past decade. Effective
techniques are an important part of the complex activity that is
teaching, and good mentorship includes analyzing a teacher’s work and
providing corrective feedback. Teachers of teachers have been doing this
for a long time. What is new is the nearly exclusive focus on
techniques, the increased role of digital technology to study them, and
the attempt to define “effective” by seeking positive correlations
between specific techniques and, you guessed it, students’ standardized
test scores. What is also new is the magnitude of the effort, punched up
considerably by a $45 million project funded by the Bill & Melinda
Gates Foundation to measure effective teaching.
Because
teaching involves a good deal of craft, I’m all for implementing useful
techniques, from guidance on giving directions to ways to pose a math
problem. But given the technocratic orientation of contemporary school
reform, I worry that other aspects of teaching less easily observed and
circumscribed—bearing, beliefs about learning, a sensibility about
students’ lives—will get short shrift.
Techniques
don’t work in isolation. The sequencing of questions, for example, is a
crucial skill, but it depends on the teacher’s knowledge of the material
being taught, children’s typical responses to this material, the kinds
of misconceptions and errors they make, and the alternative explanations
and illustrations that might help them. A teacher can’t ask meaningful
questions for long without this kind of knowledge. In equal measure, the
effectiveness of techniques, particularly for classroom management, is
influenced by students’ sense of a teacher’s concern for them and
understanding of them.
When I was visiting schools
in Chicago, I spent time in Michelle Smith’s high school math classroom.
One morning, she was calling her class to order and saw that a boy who
plays the class clown was sitting way in the back. She called him by
name, then said, “My young gentleman, I’d like you to sit up here where I
can see you.” The student groaned, uncurled himself from his desk, and
walked to the front, sauntering for the benefit of his peers. “C’mon
darlin’,” Smith added, head tilted, hand on hip, “humor me.” She
watched; he sat down. “Thank you, sir. I feel better.” With a mix of
humor and direction, she had deftly changed the seating to ensure order
in the room—an effective technique for classroom management.
Imagine,
however, the unpleasant ways this situation could have played out: the
student refusing to move, insulting or threatening her, or stirring up
his comrades sitting nearby. But Smith’s action occurred in the context
of a relationship with the class and with that boy, a legacy of her care
and of the learning that goes on in her classroom. (“Miss Smith,” the
boy later told me, “she’s teaching us how to do things we couldn’t do
before.”) Smith knows local culture, understands the rituals of
masculinity and the huge importance of allowing that student a little
space to save face. She has developed a classroom persona that blends
sass and seriousness, and she uses it strategically. Technique works in
context and within the flow of other events.
If you
conceive of teaching as a repertoire of instructional and behavior
management techniques, then you won’t appreciate the kind of social
knowledge Michelle Smith possesses. This pinched notion of teaching
combined with a “no excuses” stance toward low achievement yields a
troubling response to economic inequality: the belief that the right
kind of education can overcome poverty. We have a long tradition in the
United States of seeing education as, in Horace Mann’s words, the “great
equalizer” of social class differences. As our social safety net has
been increasingly compromised, we have put the school at the center of
our dwindling welfare state. Even though half a century’s research has
demonstrated that parental income level is the primary determiner of
educational achievement, the reformers hold fast to the demand that
schools can overcome the assaults of poverty. Charter school leader Doug
Lemov, whose Teach Like a Champion has become a user’s manual
among reformers, offers a good illustration. In his introduction, Lemov
reflects on the charter school teachers he has observed:These
outstanding teachers routinely do what a thousand hand-wringing social
programs have found impossible: close the achievement gap between rich
and poor, transform students at risk of failure into achievers and
believers, and rewrite the equation of opportunity.
Schooling becomes the one solution to poverty, the intervention that will work where others have failed.
About
15 pages later, however, Lemov offers a reminder of the ugly staying
power of inequality. A former student of his, “the bright and passionate
son of a single mother with limited English,” made the remarkable
journey to Williams College. At college, though, the student’s problems
with writing dogged him and were reflected in a professor’s unfavorable
response to a paper he wrote on Zora Neale Hurston. Lemov tells this
story to stress the importance of teaching students standard written
English. But having worked in university programs that serve students
like this one—and having been such a student myself—I find that this
story represents the intractability of inequality: even after the best
teaching Lemov and his colleagues could provide, this young man still
needs assistance at further points along the way. The student will also
need people who understand what he must be feeling: the crushing
disappointment, the possible anger, and the deep blow to his confidence.
Schools like Lemov’s might be able to narrow an achievement gap, improving the scores on district or state standardized tests, but not necessarily erase the achievement gap, which requires sustained help of many kinds, including programs that Lemov dismisses as “hand-wringing.”
The teachers in Possible Lives
worked with significant numbers of low-income children, and every one
of those teachers tried in some way to address their hardship. They
might have drawn in social service agencies, or participated in
church-based or civic organizations or political campaigns aimed at
helping the poor. Sometimes they tried to find resources for parents, or
tutored and counseled their students individually, or spent their own
money and donated food, clothing, and other goods. They taught
diligently, sometimes brilliantly, fought back despair, didn’t let up.
“The problems are big ones,” a young Calexico teacher told me, “but
they’re not going to stop me from teaching.” You cannot be in
teaching—or medicine or counseling or the ministry—without slamming up
against failure. These teachers did not rush to find excuses for their
failures, but they knew the trauma poverty brings and did their work
with that awareness. To deny the effects of poverty blinds you to the
reality of your students’ lives, lives you need to understand as fully
as you can to intervene and enlist others inside and beyond the school. I
deeply believe in the power of teaching, but to make teaching the magic
bullet against inequality or to pit it against other social and
economic interventions leads to insular and self-defeating education
policy.

As
is the case with public school teachers today, many of the teachers I
wrote about grew up in families with modest incomes. Some came from the
same region or background as their students. A small number went to
major universities, but most graduated from smaller state universities
or local colleges with teacher education programs. Some of the teachers I
visited were new, and some had taught for decades. Some organized their
classrooms with desks in rows, and others turned their rooms into hives
of activity. Some were real performers, and some were serious and
proper. For all the variation, however, the classrooms shared certain
qualities. These qualities emerged before our era’s heavy reform agenda,
yet most parents, and most reformers, would want them for their
children.
The classrooms were safe. They provided
physical safety, which in some neighborhoods is a real consideration.
But there was also safety from insult and diminishment: “They don’t make
fun of you if you mess up,” said a middle school student in Chicago.
And there was safety to take intellectual risks. The teacher was
“coaxing our thinking along,” as one of the students reading Faulkner
put it.
Intimately related to safety is respect, a
word I heard frequently during my travels. It meant many things:
politeness, fair treatment, and beyond individual civility, a respect
for the language and culture of the local population. Surveying images
of Mexican-American history on the walls of a Los Angeles classroom, a
student exclaimed, “This room is something positive. As you walk around,
you say ‘Hey, we’re somebody!’ ” Respect also has a cognitive
dimension. As a New York principal put it, “It’s not just about being
polite—even the curriculum has to be challenging enough that it’s
respectful.”
Talking about safety and respect leads
to a consideration of authority. I witnessed a range of classroom
management styles, and though some teachers involved students in
determining the rules of conduct and gave them significant
responsibility to provide the class its direction, others came with
curriculum and codes of conduct fairly well in place. But two things
were always evident. A teacher’s authority came not just with age or
with the role, but from multiple sources—knowing the subject,
appreciating students’ backgrounds, and providing a safe and respectful
space. And even in traditionally run classrooms, authority was
distributed. Students contributed to the flow of events, shaped the
direction of discussion, became authorities on the work they were doing.
These
classrooms, then, were places of expectation and responsibility. As a
Los Angeles middle school teacher observed, “Children can tell right off
those people who believe in them and those who patronize them.” Young
people had to work hard, think things through, come to terms with each
other—and there were times when such effort took them to their limits.
To be sure, some students weren’t engaged, and everyone, students and
teachers, had bad days. But overall the students I talked to, from
primary-grade children to graduating seniors, had the sense that their
teachers had their best interests at heart and their classrooms were
good places to be. The huge, burning question is how to create more
classrooms like these.

What
if reform had begun with the assumption that at least some of the
answers for improvement were in the public schools themselves, that
significant unrealized capacity exists in the teaching force, that even
poorly performing schools employ teachers who work to the point of
exhaustion to benefit their students? Imagine, then, what could happen
if the astronomical amount of money and human resources that went into
the past decade’s vast machinery of high-stakes testing-—from test
development to the logistics of testing at each school site—if all that
money had gone into a high-quality, widely distributed program of
professional development. I don’t mean the quick-hit, half-day events
that teachers endure, but serious, extended engagement of the kind
offered by the National Science Foundation and the National Writing
Project, by university summer programs in literature or science or
history, by teams of expert teachers themselves.
In
such programs, teachers read, write, and think together. They learn new
material, hear from others who have successfully integrated it into
their classrooms, and try it out themselves. Some participating teachers
become local experts, providing further training for their schools and
districts. Electronic media would facilitate participation, connecting
people from remote areas and helping everyone to check in regularly when
trying new things. These programs already exist but could be expanded
significantly if policymakers had a different orientation to reform, one
that honored teaching and the teaching profession. Distributed
professional development would substitute a human development model of
school reform for the current test-based technocratic one. And because
such professional development would enhance what teachers teach and how
they teach and assess it, there would be a more direct effect on the
classroom.
Imagine as well that school reform
acknowledged poverty as a formidable barrier to academic success. All
low-income schools would be staffed with a nurse and a social worker and
have direct links to local health and social service agencies. If poor
kids simply had eye exams and glasses, we’d see a rise in early reading
proficiency. Extra tutoring would be provided, some of which could be
done by volunteers and interns from nearby colleges. Schools would be
funded to stay open late, providing academic and recreational activities
for their students. They could become focal institutions in low-income
communities, involving parents and working with existing community
groups and agencies focused on educational and economic improvement.
Such schools already exist, and an Obama administration initiative
called Promise Neighborhoods awards grants to local programs and
agencies that provide health and social services. But the provision of
services is conceived as an add-on rather than an organic part of school
reform itself, and the services are awarded by competition to only a
percentage of the neighborhoods and schools that need them.
My
proposals do not address all that ails our schools, and what they cost
might be better spent on other ideas that are in the air. But they do
move us away from the current model of reform and closer to the
immediate needs of teachers and students. The proposals assume that our
schools have talent to be tapped, and that the physical and social
burdens of the poor are a drag on achievement.
As
with the current reform programs, these proposals would draw on
government and philanthropic funding and on large, sometimes distant,
organizations such as the National Science Foundation. But the
interventions would be adapted to the needs of particular schools and
communities by local teachers and social service providers. The writing
of narratives or a study of water-borne organisms would play out
differently in New York City versus the Mississippi Delta.
Surveying
the many unsuccessful and hugely expensive attempts at school reform in
our past, historians Tyack and Cuban observed the same mistakes being
repeated over and over again: top-down remedies, grandiose claims about
the latest technology, disdain for teachers. To improve our schools, we
need to be informed by knowledge gained from many days in the
neighborhoods surrounding them and from many, many days inside the
schoolhouse itself, learning from children’s experience and the full
sweep of a teacher’s work. This is what contemporary school reform has
failed to do. l

The great Lenin debate of 2012

(Or, the bankruptcy of “Leninism” Rediscovered)
Over the past several decades, much of the international Left has
come to question the “Leninist” party-building model that was hegemonic
among Western socialists for the majority of the twentieth century. In
the United States, it appears that the crisis of “Leninism” has
sharpened in the years since 2008. While “Leninist” groups are
notoriously prone to factional strife in general, this period seems to
have witnessed an intensified tendency toward splinters and splits
within these groups. Inevitably, this trend has generated new
scatterings of disaffected ex-members, at least a portion of whom remain
active in politics and activism. This process has been aided by the
writings and (in some cases) the ongoing interventions of previous
generations of ex-”Leninists,” who have, no doubt, helped many newly
purged and “bureaucratically excluded” comrades to make sense of their
experience within the sect-based Left. To this end, influential roles
have been played by the likes of Louis Proyect and other former members
of the 1970s-era U.S. Socialist Workers Party. Many former “Leninists”
have also been influenced by such historical critics of sect-based
socialist organizing as Hal Draper and Bert Cochran.[1]
This dynamic is certainly reflective of my personal experience as a
newly-expelled member of the International Socialist Organization (ISO).
To summarize my story in very brief, I was booted out of the ISO in
February alongside my comrades in the (now officially disbanded) ISO
Renewal Faction. During the course of our hard-fought factional struggle
within the ISO, members of the Renewal Faction discussed a number of
articles critical of “Leninism” and socialist sects. To mention a few
pieces in particular, at the height of the factional fight, we passed
around and debated Hal Draper’s “Toward a New Beginning” (1971) and “Anatomy of the Micro-sect” (1973), as well as a number of more recent documents, including Scott Jay’s “On Leninism and anti-Leninism.”[2] Naturally,
these pieces helped us make sense of the stultifying, undemocratic
environment within the ISO and our experience of being ostracized and
defamed by the leadership and their loyalist followers. Notably, since
being purged from the ISO, members of the Renewal Faction appear to have
adopted differing views on the subject of Leninism – and, for that
matter, Trotskyism, as well. Nonetheless, it’s safe to say that our
experience has led us all to develop profound critiques of the
party-building approaches adhered to by socialist sects like the ISO.
For me personally, I can say that – since February – I’ve done a
great deal of reading into some of the many Leftist debates and studies
that deal with the deep-seeded historical and methodological flaws at
the heart of the party-building model still adhered to by much of the
Left. Like so many of my fellow “Leninist” burnouts, I’ve been
particularly influenced by the writings of British academic historian
Lars Lih – the author of the paradigm-shattering study, Lenin Rediscovered, first published in 2005.[3]
Beyond this, I’ve taken particular interest in reviewing one recent
debate that deals specifically with the ISO’s approach to “Leninist”
party building. This is the so-called “Great Lenin debate,” set in
motion in January 2012 when Pham Binh, a former member of the ISO, wrote
a scathing review of a now dated political biography of Russian revolutionary V.I. Lenin.[4] Pham’s review — published online by the Australian socialist journal Links – focused on Building the Party (1975),
the first volume in a three-part series on Lenin by the late Tony
Cliff, the key leader of the British Socialist Workers Party (SWP).[5] In
the months follow its initial release, Pham’s review led to a volume of
responses by activists and scholars in both the United States and
Britain. While most of the replies dealt predominately with historical
questions, the debate inevitably came to take on a more practical
posture as well, with questions of party-building strategy quickly
rising to the fore.
Naturally, at the time, this debate garnered widespread exposure
within much of the Anglophone Left – a development that, I’d argue,
relates to the profound relevance of many of the points brought to light
in Pham’s initial review. Despite this, it’s my view that this debate
is important enough to warrant renewed attention. For this reason, I
have chosen to compile a complete listing of the contents of this
debate, which I’ve included as a “reading list” below. By doing this, my
goal is to assist other activists – including past, present, and
future members of the ISO – that are attempting to make sense of the the
flawed state of the Left today. The greater purpose behind all of this,
of course, is to contribute — in whatever way possible — to the
collective, ongoing task of renewing the international Left.
Before proceeding to this list, however, let me first provide a short
summary of the debate, followed by a few insights about the debate’s
lasting importance.

Tony Cliff and Pham Binh

So why is it that a review of Tony Cliff’s Building the Party –
a book released some 37 years prior to the outbreak of “the great Lenin
debate” – proved to be such a lightning rod for the socialist Left in
2012? The most substantial reason for this relates to the importance of
this particular book within the U.S. ISO – and for that matter, the
group’s former British sister organization, the SWP (as well as other
affiliates and ex-affiliates of the SWP’s International Socialist
Tendency). Since the ISO’s formation in 1977, the group has used Building the Party as
a textbook to guide their organizational activity. This is, fittingly,
the very purpose that this book was written to serve. As Cliff’s fellow
SWP member Duncan Hallas wrote at the time of the book’s release, Building the Party was intended as a “manual for revolutionaries.” Thus, by calling into question the factual accuracy and interpretative merit of
Cliff’s book in his 2012 review, Pham simultaneously cast doubt on the
very party-building model and core mission of both the ISO and the SWP.
For this reason, Pham Binh’s critique of Building the Party functioned not just as a book review – it
also served as an exposition of the methodological flaws and the
historical inaccuracies at the heart of the organizational project
adhered to by these groups.

As an ex-ISO member that had become thoroughly disenchanted with the
stultifying, undemocratic culture that permeates the ISO, Pham
undoubtedly wrote this review with the intention of bringing these very
issues to light. Notably, Pham makes this point in a somewhat explicit
manner in a follow-up piece, released less than a week after his initial review article:

I drew my conclusions about Cliff’s book only after I
closely studied what Lenin said and did and compared it to what Cliff
claimed Lenin said and did. The more I studied, the more striking the
divergences became.
As someone who was a member of the US International Socialist Organization for many years and used Building the Party as
a text to (mis)educate people on Lenin and the Bolsheviks, the nature,
scale and pervasiveness of Cliff’s distortions continually shocked me as
I discovered them.[6]

So what kind of dirt does Pham bring to light in his analysis?

Interestingly, Pham structures his review as a exposition of the
factual errors present in Cliff’s book. The piece thus takes the form of
a chapter-by-chapter analysis of Cliff’s mistakes and distortions. In
this way, Pham frames the review as something of a scholarly
intervention, aimed at calling out Cliff for his sloppy,
factually-inaccurate historical account. On a more subtle level,
however, Pham’s review implies that the real problem with Building the Party is not just the sheer volume of “errors, falsehoods and lies” contained within the book — rather, it relates to the political importance of Cliff’s many factual blunders. As Pham reveals, Cliff presents an image of V.I. Lenin as being what amounts to an apparatchik and a cunning bureaucratic operative.
Thus, in Cliff’s account, Lenin frequently resorts to deception and
behind-the-scenes scheming in order to enforce his will within the
Russian socialist movement. Such actions helped to bring about positive
political results, Cliff’s account seems to imply, because of Lenin’s
unprecedented skills as a Marxist and socialist leader – gifts that
endowed him with the ability to continuously perceive the correct path forward long
before other comrades had come to realize the tasks of the day. As Pham
notes in the opening section of his review, Cliff’s depiction ascribes
what amounts to “superhuman attributes” to Lenin. This is evident – Pham
asserts – in Cliff’s assertions that “Lenin adapted himself perfectly to the needs of industrial agitation” and “[Lenin] combined theory and practice to perfection.”
While Pham does not spell out this point in detail in his initial
review, it’s clear that the flawed depiction of Lenin in Cliff’s Building the Party is a matter of significant political relevance.
Historically, the basis for this faulty analysis stems — in part — from
Cliff’s bureaucratic, top-down view of the socialist movement and his
immediate political agenda at the time he wrote the book in the
mid-1970s.[7] Over
the years, this flawed political vision has — in turn — had a negative
residual impact on generations of ISO and SWP members that have been
encouraged to view this book as a “manual for revolutionaries.”
Given the political implications of Pham’s review, it isn’t
surprising that this piece provoked a shrill, vituperative response from
the leadership of the ISO. This is most evident in a reply article by
Paul D’Amato — a longtime member of the ISO Steering Committee and one
of the group’s leading dogmatists. In his rebuttal, also published in Links, D’Amato blasts Pham’s review as being a “hatchet job” and “a series of poorly aimed potshots” at Tony Cliff.[8]
Even prior to the release of D’Amato’s piece, Pham’s review had also
prompted Leftist historian Paul Le Blanc – a former member of the U.S.
SWP who joined the ISO in 2009 – to pen a pair of dismissive response articles in the days following the review’s release.[9] Just
as D’Amato was soon to do in his rebuttal, Le Blanc’s articles
stridently defend Tony Cliff while simultaneously denouncing Binh for
the critical tone of his review. As Le Blanc proclaims in the
introduction to his first reply piece,
“I have found Comrade Pham’s article… to be disappointing – rendered
much less useful than it could have been, given that its obvious purpose
is to persuade the reader that Tony Cliff’s book is little more than a
mass of ‘egregious misrepresentations’ and ‘has so many gross factual
and political errors that it is useless as a historical study of Lenin’s
actions and thoughts’. This is a demolition job. It doesn’t offer much
that we can use and build on as we face the challenges of today and
tomorrow.”[10]
Following several initial exchanges between Binh and this duo of ISO
theorists, a group of other Leftist authors also joined the fray.
Notable among them was none other than renowned historian Lars Lih. On
February 16, Lih published the first of a series of detailed articles
focusing on historical questions brought to light by this debate in the
Communist Party of Great Britain’s journal, Weekly Worker.[11] Crucially,
while these articles are posed as impartial, scholarly contributions,
Lih’s analysis consistently aligns with arguments presented in Pham’s
review. At the same time, Lih is also harshly critical of a number of
factual and interpretative points presented by both Le Blanc and
D’Amato. Most remarkably, at one point in his February 16 essay, Lih
calls out Paul D’Amato for depicting Lenin as a being what amounts to a duplicitous liar. (Specifically,
Lih’s critique deals with the assessment D’Amato provides of Lenin’s
handling of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party’s 1912 Prague
conference). As Lih insinuates, this is particularly troubling since D’Amato obviously views Lenin as being a figure worthy of political emulation.
In summarizing this point, Lih raises a series of sharp questions about
the ethical outlook of “Leninist” sects in general and the ISO (and
Paul D’Amato) in specific:

D’Amato’s description of Lenin’s duplicity (sorry,
“advantageous tactical maneuvering”) is essentially the same as the one
made by Lenin’s most vehement critics at the time – only D’Amato seems
to approve of rather than condemn Lenin’s behavior. After all, it helped
Lenin fool the Europeans and get party funds! …
I am not a member of any left organization and so I cannot comment on
whether this kind of casual cynicism is the norm – I seriously doubt
that D’Amato would apply it to issues today. But, speaking as a
historian, I maintain that Lenin would have been severely annoyed by
this defense: ah, that Lenin, he was a clever one – by stating the exact
opposite of his real intentions, he reaped factional and financial
advantage! As opposed to the D’Amatos on the left and the Elwoods on the
right, I maintain that Lenin actually behaved in an honest way during
this episode, saying what he meant and meaning what he said.[12]

In addition to Lih’s intervention, this debate also prompted response pieces by, among others, Louis Proyect and a pair of Leftist authors from the Communist Party of Great Britain – James Turley and Marc Macnair.[13]
After the initial flurry of exchanges released from late January to
April, this debate eventually morphed into something of a scholarly
discussion (albeit one with substantial practical relevance) between
Lars Lih and Paul Le Blanc. For the remainder of the spring and much of
the summer, the two historians published a number of articles in both Links and the Weekly Worker that
grappled with various historiographical issues raised by the debate.
Ultimately, the closing shot in this exchange came on September 1, when Links published a final contribution by Paul Le Blanc. The article provides a fitting title for this epic, seven-month-long historiographical battle — “The great Lenin debate.”[14]

So why is “the great Lenin debate” important?

As I see it, this debate is important
because it provides compelling proof that the organizational model
relied upon by “Leninist” sects in general – and, in specific, the ISO
– is based upon a false reading of history.

Granted, this same point has been compellingly argued both prior to
and since the release of Binh’s 2012 book review. To cite one
particularly notable example, Hal Draper’s 1990 article “The Myth of Lenin’s ‘Concept of The Party’ – or What They Did to What Is To Be Done?” backs up this point with eloquence and substantial historical documentation.[15] What’s
more, as already noted, Lars Lih’s academic writings have also done
much to show the faulty understanding of “Leninism” that underpins so
much of the contemporary Left.
Nonetheless, I’d argue that “the great Lenin debate” is somewhat
unique in its ability to expose the fallacious nature of the “Leninist”
approach to party building. The reason for this stems from the
noticeable influence of real-life class struggle and on-the-ground
socialist organizing within this particular exchange. Unlike most the
studies and exchanges on this subject, “the great Lenin debate” took
place within the context of an important moment in the U.S. class
struggle – namely, the Occupy Wall Street movement, which reached its
crescendo in mid-November 2011, just over two months before the release
of Pham’s initial review article. Crucially, this context appears to
have done much to imbue this exchange with a practical focus that
bellies the esoteric, scholarly nature of the debate itself. The reason
for this has much to do Pham Binh’s close involvement in the Occupy
movement. As documented in a series of journalistic accounts and essays
about the movement published throughout late 2011 and early 2012,
Pham was an active rank-and-file participant in Occupy’s New York City
encampment. Naturally, Pham’s writings on the movement are thus infused
with the outlook of someone with a vested interest and material stake in
this struggle. To this end, Pham’s analysis of OWS – while certainly
problematic in a number of regards – is, nonetheless, written with the goal of helping to push this important movement forward. Pham’s astute critiques of the ISO and the socialist Left from this period fit within this mold.[16]
In addition to the influence of Occupy, the “great Lenin debate” also
greatly benefits from the intervention of Lars Lih. In his four
contributions to this debate — each published in Weekly Worker – Lih
provides detailed empirical research to back up a number of claims
initially advanced by Pham Binh. To cite one particularly significant
example, Lih’s articles provide ample evidence to back up Pham’s
contention that, prior to 1917, the Bolsheviks never considered
themselves to be a political party. Rather, they saw themselves as a faction within
a broader, more inclusive, multi-tendency socialist party – the RSDLP.
(And as Lih has repeatedly pointed out in his other writings, the RSDLP
was modeled after none other than the German Social Democratic Party).

On the reading list

Before proceeding, I wanted to say a brief word about how I’ve gone
about formatting the reading list. For one thing, in contrast to typical
bibliographies (which are, of course, ordered alphabetically), I’ve chosen to structure this list chronologically.
Since the debate includes multiple responses and counterresponses
written over the span of several months, structuring the list in this
manner is essential in order to render the content of the debate easily
comprehensible.
What’s more, in addition to the actual debate itself, I’ve also
included a short appendix bibliography that lists other documents of
substantial relevance. This includes a series of articles from a 2010
symposium in the British academic Marxist journal Historical Materialism focusing on Lars Lih’s Lenin Rediscovered.[17] Notably, according to Pham Binh, this symposium provided much of the initial inspiration for his review of Cliff’s Building the Party.
As Pham later pointed out, “What prompted me in the first place to look
at Cliff’s book carefully, chapter by chapter, in the summer of 2011
was Lars Lih’s response to Chris Harman and Paul Le Blanc in Historical Materialism 18. Here, Lih mentioned some of Building the Party’s
factual errors. I was curious to see if there were any errors that Lih
had not brought to light. The rest, as they say, is history.”[18]Ben Smith

Protesters in Lower Manhattan on Wednesday, the three-year anniversary of the first Occupy Wall Street demonstration.

Andrew Renneisen / The New York Times

By COLIN MOYNIHAN

September 17, 2014

Three years after the Occupy Wall Street movement began, an unlikely conflict has emerged over one of the cause’s most precious tools: a Twitter account.
During the primacy of the Occupy movement in New York, people across the country followed @OccupyWallStNYC and other social media accounts to track the latest developments, from encampments to conflicts. Now one group of activists is accusing a former comrade of taking unilateral control of the shared account and locking out the organizers he had once collaborated with.
According to a lawsuit, which was filed on Wednesday in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, the Twitter account was created in summer 2011 by Adbusters, the Canadian magazine that first called for an occupation of Wall Street. The resulting protests began on Sept. 17, 2011.
Adbusters turned the account over to Marisa Holmes, the lawsuit said, a filmmaker and activist who had helped to moderate Occupy meetings in August 2011 in Tompkins Square Park. Ms. Holmes, in turn, gave others access to the account, which now has 177,000 followers.
But in August, Justin Wedes, one of those with access, changed the passwords and locked out his fellow administrators, according to the lawsuit.
“Each and every day that goes by while Wedes remains in control of the Twitter account is another day of plaintiff’s lost opportunity to speak to the Twitter audience that they worked to cultivate and rightly should control,” the suit states.
Mr. Wedes did not respond to requests for comment via phone or email. But in a blog post dated four days after the lockout, he wrote that he disbanded the collective of administrators because relationships among the group had become fractious.
“Clearly the question of ownership of the account is a contentious one, and I don’t pretend to have all the answers,” he wrote, adding that he planned to put the account “in the hands of responsible stewards.”
Ms. Holmes had a different recollection of events, saying that other members of the collective were about to vote Mr. Wedes out of the group.
“The key point is that it was a collaborative project, but he didn’t get that,” she said. “Justin was censoring other people and promoting his own work.”
The account was dormant for about a week, she said. But then the posts began again, apparently written by Mr. Wedes. Some promoted large-scale events like a climate march planned for this weekend in New York. Others referred to projects connected to Mr. Wedes, like a campaign in Detroit protesting the city’s decision to shut off water to residents with unpaid water bills.
Over the years there have been lawsuits between companies and employees about control of Twitter accounts. But the recent suit would appear to present a rare instance of that type of squabble among members of a political protest movement, let alone one that was created largely through the use of social media.
The suit is asking the court to order Mr. Wedes to turn over control of the Twitter account to OWS Media Group. The suit also seeks $500,000 in compensatory damages, and requests an injunction forbidding Mr. Wedes from turning over control of the account to anyone else or sending further messages from the account.
Mr. Wedes did not appear ready to comply. Not long after the lawsuit was filed on Wednesday, the account offered a new post: “Lawyers are the tools of the 1% and their children. We believe in class war.”
The message was deleted less than an hour after it had been posted.

Thursday, August 28, 2014

Sectarian Delusions on the American Left

by LOUIS PROYECT

Another International Socialist Organization Internal Bulletin has been leaked to the public over on the External Bulletin website,
home to a group of former members. It contains an article written by
long-time leader Todd Chretien that targets Socialist Alternative
(SAlt)—the group that is rightfully proud of their comrade Kshama Sawant
being elected to the Seattle City Council and for her role in the
passing of a $15 minimum wage.
I have been partial to Chretien in the past because of his close ties
to the late Peter Camejo, whose gubernatorial campaign in California he
helped organize in 2003. I worked closely with Camejo in the early 80s
and confess to having stolen all my best ideas from him.
The ISO’s chief criticism of Socialist Alternative’s electoral
strategy is that it is “triumphalist”, a musty term from the Marxist
lexicon. Specifically, Chretien regards SAlt’s call for a hundred
independent candidates to run in the 2014-midterm elections as an
“overblown perspective”. In his view, her victory did not necessarily
mean that political conditions had ripened to the point where such a
large number of candidates would be forthcoming. Such “triumphalism”
might even be catching–to the point where ISO’ers would be seduced into
believing that it was feasible to form a new “broad” party in the near
term, or that regroupment of the far left was the order of the
day. Heaven forefend.
The ISO is not the only group on the left that is wary about efforts on behalf of “broad” parties. WSWS.org,
the newspaper of a tiny sect that is hostile not only to SAlt but also
to the ISO (and just about everyone else on the left as well), told its
readers:

Socialist Alternative has called for a new coalition of
like-minded groups, in alliance with the trade unions, to run 100
“independent” candidates in local elections next year. Their aim is to
establish a political framework analogous to Syriza in Greece, the Left
Party in Germany, and the New Anti-capitalist Party in France.

In tracking down SAlt’s call, it turns out to be more what we might
call food for thought rather than a promissory note. From the Kshama Sawant website:

As a concrete step to get there, we should form
coalitions throughout the country with the potential to come together on
a national level to run 100 independent working-class candidates in the
2014 mid-term elections. The unions who supported the Moore and Sawant
campaigns and many others should run full slates of independent
working-class candidates in the mid-term, state, and local elections.

Chretien points out that the 100 independent candidates have not
materialized, a sure sign of SAlt’s pie-in-the-sky tendencies. But was
such a call anything more than what we used to call “propaganda” in the
American SWP? (For some odd reason the ISO has studied the SWP for
useful hints about party-building. In my view, this is like studying the
Hindenburg or the Titanic for transportation ideas.)
Before it became a dirty word, propaganda meant raising an idea that
could inspire people to take political action. For example, Lenin used
to propagandize for a constituent assembly in Czarist Russia whether or
not it was immediately on the agenda. I for one think that the call for a
hundred independent candidates was not only right but also one that
could be raised again in the next election cycle, to use the hackneyed
term from CNN and MSNBC.
With respect to the Syriza question, it is not exactly clear that
SAlt is so gung-ho on a broad party. In the most recent Greek elections
their comrades ran their own campaign as a way of differentiating
themselves from a party that they have characterized as “inadequate” and
adhering to “watered down” demands. So, WSWS.org can breathe a sigh of
relief.
Unlike the people behind WSWS, the ISO is at least verbally committed
to the idea of a Syriza type formation in the USA. Just over a year ago
their leader Ahmed Shawki gave a talk to an ISO conference that pointed
in such a direction even if it ultimately led nowhere. One must
conclude that both the ISO and SAlt are both capable of making
unfulfilled projections. I urge that they be forgiven for such
peccadillos.
Probably worried a bit about the smaller organization breathing down
the ISO’s neck, Chretien calls attention to a SAlt article filled with
the characteristic bravado of small propaganda groups convinced of their
special role in the final showdown with capitalism. The article speaks
of having picked up new members in 45 cities and projects the group
doubling in size this year, mostly on account of Kshama Sawant’s high
profile.
Like Hertz deriding Avis, Chretien dismisses all this as “irrational
exuberance”, Yale economist Robert Schiller’s term for stock market and
real estate bubbles. One can understand why he would be so skeptical. It
was not so long ago that the ISO itself had the illusion of nonstop
growth until it ran into the glass ceiling all such groups impose upon
themselves with their ideological purity and their bogus notions of
“democratic centralism”. If SAlt’s goal was to become a party of 1,000
members, history will record that it is certainly within reach. But in a
country of nearly 300 million people, that is like spitting into the
ocean. The sad reality is that it is only a broad left party that can
begin to reach those millions, something that neither the ISO nor SAlt
is ready to acknowledge except as an abstraction. In reality it would
require dissolving themselves into a much larger movement and thus
losing their precious individuality.
Let me turn now to the rather arcane matter of how the ISO
distinguishes itself from SAlt in terms of their revolutionary bona
fides, a topic that I am sure would make most CounterPunch readers’ eyes
glaze over. I will do my best to make my account as lively as possible.
SAlt’s “irrational exuberance” was something they supposedly caught
like a bad cold from their leadership in Britain, where the Committee
for a Workers International is based. This latest attempt to build a
Fourth International has the same tendency as every one in the past,
going back to the days when Leon Trotsky was running the show. It
revolves around the idea that a prerevolutionary situation exists and
that it will be squandered unless Leninist parties are built in the nick
of time. Chretien scoffs at the CWI’s claim that their South African
section was in the vanguard of the working class given their tiny vote
(0.05). We are led to believe that Socialist Alternative has the same
delusions of grandeur.
Of course, such projections are essential for groups in the
“Leninist” mold. How else would you persuade young people to give up so
much of their time, energy and money unless they felt that socialism was
on the near-term agenda? What tends to happen with such groups is
burn-out as people reach their 30s or 40s and the cold, hard reality
sinks in that capitalism stands before them like an immovable object
when their small numbers are quite resistible. The only force capable of
making a dent in that immovable object will have to accept people on
their own terms. The largely Black and Latino NYC subway work force that
is quite capable of bringing Wall Street to its knees by not reporting
to work and that supported the Occupy movement is not likely to attend 3
meetings a week or fit in with a milieu largely made up of white kids
who attended Columbia University and other top-drawer institutions.
Chretien also takes issue with CWI leader Peter Taaffe’s claim that a
“rapid and peaceful socialist transformation” of society is possible,
an obviously revisionist notion. No such illusions exist in the
ideologically granite-hard ISO that would never make such errors.
Instead of succumbing to parliamentary cretinism as they used to put it a
century ago, the ISO has an “extra-parliamentary” orientation. What
Chretien fails to mention is that Taaffe was not speaking about Fabian
socialist gradualism but rather about one of the most
“extra-parliamentary” struggles of the past 50 years, namely the
May-June 1968 events in France when workers and students built
barricades and seemed poised to take power. Taaffe wrote:

There is not only the sombre tragedy of Chile, but the
brilliant example of France, when in May 1968 over 10 million workers
participated in a magnificent general strike. The economy was paralysed
and the state suspended in mid-air. When General de Gaulle fled in panic
to the headquarters of the French forces in Germany, his
commander-in-chief, General Massu, told him bluntly that it would be
impossible for the army to intervene against the working class under
those conditions. A rapid and peaceful socialist transformation of French society would have been entirely possible.

In other words, Taaffe was not talking up Norman Thomas but V.I.
Lenin. A “rapid and peaceful socialist transformation” was possible in
the same way that it was possible in October 1917. Bloodshed only came
when Soviet Russia was invaded, after the relatively peaceful initial
conquest of power. One hopes that Chretien can avoid quoting his
adversaries out of context in the future. Such behavior does not reflect
well on him.
Chretien complains about SAlt reneging on promises to work with the
ISO on election campaigns: “It remains to be seen if SAlt can overcome
its sectarian tendencies and learn how to genuinely collaborate
with other forces on the left.” Who can say why (or even if) this
haughty attitude was manifested? Similar complaints were raised about
the ISO when their rivals approached them about endorsing Sawant’s first
campaign for city council. My experience with these sorts of “he said,
she said” disagreements is that both parties share blame. Since they are
fighting for market share, there is an almost inevitable tendency to
blame each other when an agreement can’t be reached like in a failed
corporate merger.
Finally, Cretien draws a contrast between the ISO and the group that it can see gaining rapidly in its rear view mirror:

Our stated goal is no different from Socialist
Alternative’s. We are “dedicated to the project of creating a
revolutionary workers’ party as a part of a worldwide movement for
socialism.” However we are going about this task in way that is
different from SAlt’s approach. Our vision is not that the ISO will just
become the revolutionary workers party when it reaches a certain size
and we drop the “O” and add a “P.” The creation of real mass party of
revolutionary workers will undoubtedly involve forces larger than us.
Our work is in the creation and development of Marxist militants who are
able be involved with those larger forces, movements and unions in
order to weave the threads that will in the future pull sections of
these forces into that thing that will be a party.

One of the things I have learned about the Leninist left over the
years is that except for the nethermost reaches like WSWS.org or the
Spartacist League, it is de rigueur to make disclaimers like it
“will undoubtedly involve forces larger than us.” The problem is that we
are not interested in what happens down the road. We are focused on
2014 when small left groups have a heavy responsibility for taking the next step
to draw in larger forces. The ISO, like the Socialist Alternative, is
an energetic, uncompromising, principled group that we can appreciate
for its efforts. However, we are in a period of deepening class
confrontation where everybody on the left will be sorely tested as to
their ability to transcend artificial divisions that weaken us in the
face of the enemy. The time to overcome such divisions is now, not in
the distant future. In fact actions that we take today, or fail to take,
will have an impact on the relationship of forces down the road. Unless
we begin to move away from sectarianism today, our chances of success
in the future will be compromised if not entirely thwarted. One hopes
that both the ISO and Socialist Alternative can rise to the occasion.Louis Proyect blogs at http://louisproyect.org and is the moderator of the Marxism mailing list. In his spare time, he reviews films for CounterPunch.

Friday, August 22, 2014

Good cops, dedicated and skilled ones, learn how to look for signs of criminal behavior instead of profiling by race ...good policing requires judgment, being able to tell the difference between a black teenager in sneakers who’s running because he just snatched a purse and one who’s running because his mother said he had to be home for dinner by 6pm....a former Baltimore city cop and Maryland state trooper, told me in 2012. Police who are “serious about their craft” watch out for the body-language cues that indicate when someone’s carrying a gun or looking to break into parked cars. To search large numbers of people instead of patiently observing to see who the real bad guys are, he said, is both unconstitutional and lazy policing.

For a left-wing newspaper, I thought Steven Wishnia went outside the "usual left suspect" piece. Rarely do you see terms like "the craft of policing." And just like we know that the attacks by ed deformers on teachers are unfair by lumping them all in one bag, we might also be concerned about lumping all police in one bag.

They included a photo of Josmar Trujillo, who I know from my gym and from some of his struggles over his kids' charter school and leadership of stop and frisk activities in Rockaway. Josmar is one of the most articulate people I know and he has appeared on the WNYC Brian Lehrer show.

Barely six months after New York City's charter school movement seemingly secured its future with sweeping legislation in
Albany, advocates are gearing up for a new battle in the upcoming
legislative session to eliminate or increase the cap on the number of
new charters that can be created.
Emboldened by their legislative successes last session, thank to help from Governor Andrew Cuomo,
charter leaders and groups are in the early planning stages of
launching a unified push to get the cap extended or eliminated as a
line-item in this year's final budget. Sources said that meetings with
legislators will likely begin later this fall after the governor's
race, and intensify throughout the winter.
New York City will likely have just 17 slots for new charter schools by this fall, assuming that the charterproposals currently under review are approved, as is widely expected.
Advocates say they're optimistic about their chances, which would all but guarantee rapid growth for the charter sector.

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"Usually the conditions that lead to lifting a cap
include long waitlists for charters, strong academic performance and
many successful models that you want to replicate, support from
political leaders and a strong, vocal advocacy infrastructure," said
Nina Rees, the president and C.E.O. of the National Alliance for Charter
Schools. "It is the right place to completely lift the cap," Rees said,
adding her group, which has national influence, will help in the effort
to extend the cap if local advocates ask.
Advocates are
expecting more support from Cuomo, who took up the charter cause in a
very public way this year by siding with Success Academy leader Eva
Moskowitz and other charter leaders in a fight with the city, and muted
opposition from Mayor Bill de Blasio, who was on the losing side of that
fight.
A spokeswoman for Cuomo referred Capital to a budget
official, who noted that the statewide cap still allowed room for
charter growth outside of New York City.
"The breaks start to go
on now in terms of ability to plan new charters," said James Merriman,
C.E.O. of the New York City Charter School Center. He also said that, as
the cap quickly approaches, "the cap starts to look like the Berlin
Wall. It's simply an artificial barrier."
Merriman believes New
York City will have a strong case to make in removing its charter cap,
which would ensure that the city's charters have both a dedicated
funding stream for charter facilities and unlimited room to grow.
"It's fundamentally a crazy policy to put any limit on creating more successful public schools," he said.
New
York City's charter cap was created under New York's original 1998
charter law allowing 200 schools statewide, and was extended by 114
schools during a 2010 fight in Albany over the cap. New York state and
New York City have different caps; there are still 139 slots available
for upstate charters.
Fresh off her victory
in Albany against Mayor Bill de Blasio earlier this year, Success
Academy C.E.O. Eva Moskowitz is likely to emerge as one of the leaders
of the charter cap push. Noting the shrinking cap, Moskowitz applied to
open 14 new charter schools by 2016 with the remaining charter slots,
which will nearly double the size of her charter network.
"[Moskowitz]
is sitting on a goldmine, and would make a great advocate to make the
case for lifting the cap," said Rees, whose group recently appointed
Moskowitz to its "charter hall of fame." A spokeswoman for Moskowitz
declined to comment.
Devora Kaye, a Department of Education
spokeswoman, said "as we work to support all children and educators, we
look forward to collaborating with all community stakeholders."
Opposition from the United Federation of Teachers and its affiliates is all but guaranteed, meaning a familiar series of rallies and counter-rallies will likely flood the Capitol in 2015.
"Given
the charters' track record, the cap should be lowered," Michael
Mulgrew, president of the U.F.T. said in a statement. "Raising the cap
will drain more money from New York's traditional public schools, and
the only ones to benefit will be a few people in the charter industry."
During the 2010 cap battle, union leaders and charter critics worked in more regulations on how
many special needs students and English language learners charters
would have to admit, by way of compromise. Charter advocates say more
regulations in that vein will be likely to pass legislation this time
around.
And while the 2010 charter cap fight was lengthy and contentious,
the national picture is encouraging for the local charter sector, as
many states have successfully eliminated their caps. According to
research from the National Alliance, the majority of states with
unlimited charters originally had caps. Some states, like Colorado and
Maine, have charter laws with sunset provisions that will eventually
eradicate the caps the laws were passed along with. Others, like Iowa,
Louisiana and Tennessee lifted their caps in order to be eligible to
receive federal Race to the Top funding.

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About Me

Norm Scott worked in the NYC school system from 1967 to 2002, spending 30 of those years teaching elementary school in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn (District 14). He retired in July 2002. He has been active in education reform and in the UFT, often as a critic of union policy, since 1970, working with a variety of groups. In 1996 he began publishing Education Notes, a newsletter for teachers attending the UFT Delegate Assembly. In 2002, he expanded the paper into a 16-page tabloid, printing up to 25,000 copies distributed to teacher mailboxes through Ed Notes supporters. Education Notes started publishing a blog in Aug. 2006. Norm also writes the School Scope education column for The Wave, the Rockaway Beach community newspaper.